Cleaning Out the Basement

With all of the improvements we’ve been making around the house recently, some major items have just been ignored. The biggest space we’ve failed to observe? The dreaded basement.

Wow is all I can say. I’m not a hoarder by any means (I threw out my wedding dress the day after I got married), but I seem to accumulate furniture, toys and holiday decorations faster than I can get rid of them.

And I mean, who doesn’t have a chaise sitting in the middle of their basement?

So it was finally time to straighten up and get our act together. Last Saturday I picked up a Bagster from Lowe’s for about $30 since we couldn’t afford a large dumpster.

All of the big, nice items went to a local charity while the trash went to the Bagster. Pick up was only $109 for our area. Well worth it to have a clean space.

Cause here’s what our basement looks like now…

Yeah, kinda forgot we had a ping pong table under all that mess…

All of my Christmas decorations are neatly stored away in plastic bins.

I also got plastic bins for all of my daughter’s old clothes. 11 large bins and 2 double-wide bins. Yeah, that’s a lot of clothes, especially for a kid who is only 4 (plus there’s another one in her closet). Let’s just say Grandma likes to shop.

Huge improvement thus far. Still some things I don’t quite need, but I’m going to let my sister dig through the furniture & decor when she moves back to St. Louis.

So, all it took was one Saturday afternoon (about 4 hours total) to clean the entire basement. Whew. Glad it’s done.

Is there any project you’ve been putting on hold due to anxiety?C’mon, can’t be much worse than this!

Comments

Again you proved yourself. You have the power to transform anything from the worst to the best. The new look of the basement is a glaring example of that. I do love the Bagster, it seems very convenient.

Hats off to your efforts. Now I am going to envy your efforts for sure :-)

how did you get that bagster up the stairs? i’d be afraid i’d fill it so much i wouldn’t be able to get it out.
love it tho. i’m getting there – i just need to get the junk out – then go thru the bins that are already full.
getting there..just need some more motivation…

Ha! Should’ve mentioned that we carried all the trash upstairs to the Bagster that was in the garage. We just filled trashcans, carried them up and dumped them into the bagster. C’mon girl, you can do it!!

I just wish my basement looked like your before pictures. I would be ecstatic. Our basement looks like the aftermath of a tornado. I have a craft area set up in one corner of my basement that I would have to pole vault to get to and unfortunately I’m not much of a track star. However, you did a wonderful job and I will keep hoping that one day my basement will be organized.

Oh, WAY worse!!! My husband has boxes, and boxes of computer manuals that we have moved across country TWICE. Now you have to understand that computer manuals are pretty much obsolete the freaking second you buy them! I spent last year rearranging all my christmas stuff into bins and labeled by color….I can’t even get to them this year because of all the junk down there!!!

I’m pretty sure I would take your before basement over our mess!! Hubby is sort of a hoarder (more of a never throw it away kind of guy)!! When we moved he had half full boxes of stuff from high school (he had been out for over 15 years at that point!!). Great job and I may have to pass along the bagster info, great idea!!